And have a peek at In Vitro Fertility Goddess, my critically-acclaimed book – See Reviews – which details my own brushes with insanity on the speculum-lined path to having a child – scroll down this page to Read a Free Excerpt.

You can also instantly receive a Free Copy of ‘Herbs and IVF’ valued at $29.95, the ground-breaking fertility eBook by Stacey Roberts aka “The Baby Maker”. Find out how by entering your email in the Free eBook Box top right – privacy guaranteed. Enjoy your stay! Jodi Panayotov

“In Vitro Fertility Goddess takes the indignities and disappointments of infertility and turns them into a touching, achingly-funny journey into eventual motherhood. This is much more than a story of baby-making: Jodi has produced a page-turning, laugh-aloud adventure story.”

Fran Kelly, Presenter ABC Radio National “Breakfast”

In Vitro Fertility Goddess Book Excerpt

Have just been on another infertility site with other equally fanatical women, if nothing else it’s good to know others have obsessive infertility compulsive disorders. And equally reassuring is that relative to many of them I am actually quite sane. For instance, have not got M on brazil nut and green-leaf tea diet whilst alternating placing of penis from left to right in silk boxer shorts then expecting him to impregnate me when I’m hanging upside down in batlike fashion from a beam that I had him install in our bedroom.

How women on these sites endlessly discuss all manner of bodily fluids in micro detail, their entire sex lives with partners etc. is truly amazing. Men would never go near them again if they read this stuff. Imagine if with every Playboy centrefold instead of saying:

‘I like to rub myself nude against a man whilst wearing only a collar and Blahnik stilettoes by an open fire. Once I made love to three men at a time doggy-style behind a sand-dune’ they said:

‘When I ovulate I produce a lot of egg-white stringy mucous, this is when I’m most fertile but men find it a turn-off when it goes pasty and yellow and smelly during my luteal phase. I love my nipples as they have blue spider veins on them when I have PMS but don’t come near me then as I fart a lot and get crampy and bad-tempered.’

….

Back at work after the failed conception trip to Paris, one thing I seem unable to avoid is Fertility Goddess workmates.

There used to be one on a flight per week, but all of a sudden there seems to be at least one on every flight.

Is like lambing season in the air, with protruding stomachs wherever you look. The main culprit (besides the husbands) is the Olympic Games which are fast approaching and nobody wants to fly during them. Girls have actually postponed/timed their families around the event to avoid it!

And worse, they’ve succeeded. The joke is that the maternity uniform is actually the official Olympic uniform. Almost every flight I find myself working with a pregnant fertility goddess and the most annoying attribute is their perception that because they are glowingly pregnant everyone else must be pregnant or at least trying.

Worse, the ones who know I’ve been to Paris get all ‘nudge, nudge, wink, wink’ with me, throwing meaningful glances at my stomach and making comments like “Oh Paris is the city of lurve. My friend went there and it was so romantic she got pregnant!”

What do they think, the sight of the Eiffel Tower and all that Haussman architecture turns you into rabbits bonking day and night for weeks on end?

And, like women in the newly engaged state who are incapable of discussing anything but wedding dresses and engagement rings, these pregnant women are incapable of talking about any topic save for ultrasounds and baby names. Is totally excruciating!

This morning I was on the end of a trolley with one such girl and by about halfway through handing out the trays, was practically at the point of forcibly opening an aircraft door mid-flight and getting self sucked into the upper atmosphere. The morning sickness, the cravings, the veins, on it went. Then she interrupted herself to throw in,

‘Oh, what about you then? You’ve been married for years now, when are you going to have a baby?”

With every bit of self-control I could find, I stopped myself just in time from inducing an aisle birth by way of trolley.

“Actually I just lost one, miscarriage, you know.”

She went slightly green but it could have been her morning sickness.

There, I’d said it. Shouted it, actually, at thirty-nine thousand feet. The entire rear of the plane simultaneously looked up from their turkey rissoles and this was strangely liberating. Back in the galley the no-longer-smug girl apologised and the other girls went all quiet and seemed to whisper for the rest of the flight.

Later as we were leaving the aircraft a non-pregnant girl attached herself to my side and confessed that she too had had a miscarriage last year and I was the first person she’d told outside of immediate family.

“What is it, why don’t we talk about it? It’s like there’s a hidden code of silence or something. I’ve never in ten years of working here heard of one miscarriage. And I’ve heard all about every birth.”

“They’re all proud of their births, nobody’s proud of having miscarriage.”

“But we don’t deliberately cause our miscarriages.”

What was wrong with women that they felt so ashamed to talk about their reproductive failings and so compelled to flaunt their fertility to each other?

…

Am off to IVF meet tonight, will be only ‘single’ there amongst other couples. These people are like the living dead, wandering from appointment to appointment, being herded here, shifted there, referred elsewhere then experimented on. Is like a bad Singles Club or tragic dating agency that have been forced to join in act of desperation.

Am now officially one of them, being controlled by major outside force, having surrendered to it. No longer feel attached to society, walk around with cloudy film between me and them, the ‘haves’ and the less visible ‘have-nots’.

Another thing these couples had in common besides obviously having money was all were aged thirty-to-forty-something. Would be good characters for new show, “Infertility and The City.” Could be based on number of couples who meet regularly at doctor’s rooms, clinics, day hospitals etc., and none of them have sex as they’re all over it, the women frequently have hormone-induced emotional outbursts and all wear expensive shoes/drive expensive cars. Only sex scenes on show consist of men masturbating in white rooms with glass containers and piles of worn centrefold magazines. None ever achieve baby as then show over would be over like when Sex and The City girls all meet husbands).

Certainly is not case of “Yahoo, hip hip hurrah, here I am at the IVF hospital!”

Oddly enough they served beer and wine as freebies and people were getting stuck into it as if we were all at strange bar somewhere. Unlike normal bars where patrons shout at each other, at this one everyone spoke in hushed tones. I had thought they wouldn’t be condoning alcohol with people trying to fall pregnant but maybe they thought, ‘oh none of them have any hope let’s at least get them relaxed and happy, poor things.’

Was looking around room thinking, which 70% of people here will be the ones who pay $3500 for the beer and wine they’re drinking? We all sit here now in hope but a lot of us won’t succeed. Who will walk away with a baby and who will walk away empty-handed-and-pocketed? Will I be a lottery winner or loser?

Also the whole wine and cheese thing is a bit odd in this setting. Is a false social premise to make people relax and chat? If so it failed miserably. It’s not as if we’re here to meet new friends and partners. What do people at what is essentially an infertility club talk about?

“Hi, pleased to meet you and what brings you here? Low sperm count? Oh, I see, the old polycystic ovaries. Yes the woman in red has the same thing – you should meet her. Hobbies? Oh, temperature taking, mucous checking…Chlomid? No given that away, got a bit hooked…”

“I’d recommend In Vitro Fertility Goddess to anyone having fertility problems or thinking about starting a family…it’s really a fantastic read!”

Alex Bernard, Presenter Afternoons, 4BC Radio

“…it’s explicit, entertaining, enlightening and much more than a memoir. It’s a love story, an adventure and a mystery. And just as their little girl was the gift the Panayotov’s craved, IVF Goddess is another gift, one with a message for existing parents and the hopeful ones making their own difficult journey.”